Matrimonial primer

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Matrimonial Primer

First Lesson in Designing

Matrimonial Primer

by V B. Ames with a Pictorial
Matrimonial Mathematics &
Decorations by Gordon Ross

Paul Elder and Company
Publishers, San Francisco

Copyright, 1905

by PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY

San Francisco

$

The Tomoy* Press
San Francisco

TO

H. S. A.

THE WISEST WOMAN
I KNOW

167623

UNIVERSITY

is for Announcement,
Our modern pagan

way
Of publishing the wedding

bans
Anent the happy day.

If you are looking for a wife who
will be as pliable and responsive as clay
in the potter's hands, you'll have to
dig her up from foreign soil.

A lover is an indulgence; a husband
a confirmed habit. Acquire only a
good one.

167623

The woman who charmed you with
her bright, vivacious wit may not be
able to keep it up three hundred and
sixty-five days in every year. You were
a stimulant, but you've become a steady

diet.

•

How beautiful is love! How perfect
it seems with all its illusions, delusions
and dreams!

Addition
Ex. : One added to one = I

is the Bride, all else beside
Doth strangely take to

flight;
The strains begin from

Lohengrin,
And the world drops out

of sight.
Her soul seems lost, till the

gulf is crossed
That their two souls

divide ;
Old shoes and flowers and

rice in showers
To earth recall the
bride.

Don't marry a man thinking you can
smooth him down or rub him up to
your ideal. If he does not appear ideal
to your blind love, better leave him to
some one more blind.

You'll probably never be called upon
to lay down your life for your wife, so

you might as a tender substitute look
pleasant, don your dress suit and ac-
company her to her club reception.

Don't be a valet to

your

husband.

is the Ceremony, long or

short,

According to their lon-
gitude or creed;
The man is always bored,
By the maid it is adored,
And for both it fills a
long-felt need.

Probably you intend your wife to
have some money; it might be con-
ducive to intelligent expenditure if she
knew about the amount.

If you have a large and generous
impulse, and wish to give your wife a
present and are not sure what she

would like, you had better give her
some personal attention until the a b c's
of her tastes and preferences are known
to you.

If by any rare chance your husband
is a good talker, you will shine best as
a listener; if he isn't, give him an op-
portunity occasionally to practice.

Don't wear callous places all over
your husband's tender heart by inces-
sant demands upon his attention and
sympathy.

might stand for Devil,
Or Dakota or Divorce,

Or for Duty to each other
That insures the happier
course.

Absence may make the heart grow
fonder; presents have been known to
have the same effect.

Don't be satisfied with just keeping
the wife — keep her love, by about the
same methods used in winning it.

Jenny Wren once said to her mate,
"How loud and conspicuous Miss Lark
is!" Johnny Wren strained his ear to
catch her every twitter.

"How ridiculously fat Mrs. Robin
has grown!" Johnny took admiring
note of her curves.

"What a disgraceful flirt Miss Blue-
bird is ! ' Johnny returned her coy
salute.

"What a terrible reputation Mrs.
Blackbird is getting ! " Johnny immedi-
ately investigated for himself.

Subtraction
Ex.: One taken from one leaves "X"

is for Ever, as each fondly

thinks
His love can never grow

less;

And above in the blue
Is one star for the true
Who love but one love
and that bless.

It's unwise to assume that your own
gray spots will escape attention merely
by painting the other fellow with black

ones.

As long as man seeks his mate and
proposes the union, lack of felicity im-
peaches only his judgment.

If you marry a sweet young maid of
half your years with the idea of edu-
cating her to a similarity of tastes and
companionableness for declining years,
ten to one Cupid will start a rival kin-
dergarten not far along your life's way.

Perfect frankness as to your financial
standing will remove the temptation
to secret expenditures for your own,
and extravagant ones for your wife's
pleasure.

for Flowers and Fortune,
Fair days and Faithful

Friends;
Full measure of life and

love, and
Faith till the story ends.

You may hope to influence your
husband's politics, religion, business, but
don't tamper with his pronunciation.

If the soul of the woman did not
appeal to you, regardless of its covering
of clothes or flesh, you deserve disap-
pointment, and will doubtless get it.

You can make a selfish, inconsiderate,
dissatisfied husband out of a perfectly
kind and amiable man by performing
menial services that any healthy, self-
respecting man should do for himself.

To desire your wife's happiness
amounts to mighty little, unless you
are willing it shall be accomplished in
her way.

is the Groom ; to under-
stand
The laws that govern a

match,

You stand in a row all
the men that you
know,
And at leap-frog incite

each back.
Your eyes tightly

bind

Until you are blind —
Grab a frog and call it
a catch.

A partnership of lives involves a shar-
ing of liabilities as well as profits.

Clinging vines and business imbeciles
are out of fashion as wives. A course
in commercial law or social economy
is a valuable matrimonial asset these
days.

Two positive matrimonial opinions
are apt to have a negative effect on
harmony.

Before your marriage did it ever
occur to you that your dressmaker's
awful and ruinous blunders, or the
rapid and unwarranted dissolution of
the parlor rug, or the unsatisfactory
method of tradespeople, or the exact
location and condition of your corns,
were just the sort of topics for a man's
perpetual home entertainment?

Multiplication

begins a trinity

Of words that have one

soul —

Heaven, Home, and Hap-
piness
All play a single role.

If you married your husband without
compulsion, be his companion without
reservation.

Even the promise to love, honor, and
obey does not make imperative instant
repetition of all your friends' little con-
fidences.

A little love is a dangerous thing.

Use your best conversational powers
occasionally at your own dinner table.

is a lonely pronoun,

Retired from active use,

While ive works overtime,
And the Union allows
the abuse.

Can your wife acquiesce in the follow-
ing sentiment — "The married woman
is the only one who is always sure of
her beau"?

There are nagging women and pro-
fane men; it is hoped they will all
marry each other.

Many a man has won a woman's love
and later lost her respect. To keep
the latter is always the finer and more
vital accomplishment.

Few women admit half their physical
suffering; be generous with your sym-
pathy.

recalls the Jars and Jangles
Of the Joneses over the

way,
And the countless family

wrangles

Overheard most any day.
Do you shudder at the

prospect ?
Not a shudder; nor did

they.
Are not you love's true

elect ?

Ah, no, just the same
old clay !

A woman who appears at the break-
fast table hideous in curl papers and
sloppy wrappers must think she has
married a blind man or a sand burr.

A woman can easily overdraw on
her husband's sympathy; it is one of
his short assets.

If you can act as your husband's
cook, laundress, housekeeper, tailor, and
barber, and still have time to keep
abreast of his intellectual wants and
pursuits, well and good ; otherwise, sac-
rifice a few of the above to companion-
ableness.

Try and discriminate between cour-
tesy and caresses; the latter are as out
of place in public as kimonos and car-
pet slippers.

Division
Ex.: 'Two divided by one = o

is for Kisses, —
It also stands for

Kitchen ;

Their relative importance
Needs no mathemati-
cian.

Try and appear conscious that the
domestic machinery is running smoothly
before the opposite condition arrives.

The ceremony that made you a wife
has no charm to keep your husband's
love; that is done by your own per-
sonal charm.

Every self-respecting husband should
have a private code known only to
himself. On the way down town he
makes the following memoranda: r s — ,
7 k: p d q ; and Brown, in the next
seat, infers that Black is composing a
cablegram to a Berlin banker, when he
is only promising himself to pay the
dog tax, leave his wife's gloves at the
cleaner's, and be home promptly for
dinner.

How did you entertain this man
before your engagement? Try some-
thing similar after marriage.

ove takes a hand of each,
And they wander afar

and away;
And never again
To that maid and man
Can life be as yesterday.

When you are married, be a good
comrade, if it breaks every canon of
your church and ancestry.

A man should be willing to use the
same sort of ability in his position as
head of the family that he does as head
of a firm.

For a wife who whines, or a husband
who sneers, there is no sort of marital
salvation.

You and your wife and your check-
book should be a committee on finance
that meets monthly with closed doors.

is for Money and Mothers-
in-law,
And Millions of other

Mistakes
That every fond relative

clearly foresaw,
And mentions each time
for your sakes.

Of course, your wife has flowers
every day if you smoke more than one
El Sidelo.

When your husband seems willing
that all the economy shall be at the
home end, insist upon laundering his
shirts yourself.

If you are morally, aesthetically and
financially certain that your wife ought
to enjoy a new Persian rug for your
den more than a box for grand opera,
don't be too confident of the charms
of Persia.

Don't give your husband a back-
comb for a birthday present.

w is the appointed time,
The time for song and

laughter;
For love and joy and

deepest bliss,
For selfless thought and

holiest kiss,
For kindly word and

gentle way,
Forbearance, faith and

courtesy, —
The time to dream of
after.

Did you really have foremost in
mind and at heart the woman's happi-
ness when you married?

Tandems came in with some other
foreign ideas; a span is rather more
our American idea in matrimony as
well as horses.

It is barely possible that you have a
wife who would prefer a daily letter
during your absence to some new bau-
ble on your return,

Never ask your wife why she doesn't

get a dress like Mrs. . Unless they

are twins, the effect of following your
suggestion will appall you and mor-
tify her.

is for Optimism,

That leads you to be-
lieve

That two can make one;
May it ne'er take its
leave!

Be entertaining to your husband, or
some other woman will.

A woman may hold out and even
wax stronger in spite of your financial
failure or a deformity that overtakes
you, but just sicken and die in the face
of uncouth table manners.

A wise woman sometimes leaves her
husband long enough to increase his
appreciation, but not long enough for
him to seek consolation.

Even matrimony does not preclude
individual brushes and towels, and, oc-
casionally, opinions.

is the general Public,
And the Public gen-
erally knows
About everything it

shouldn't

Except where to keep
its nose.

Beat your wife in private, but don't
mortify her in public.

A quail once said to her mate:
"Bob, dear, do get home before sun-
down, and don't forget the wheat for
breakfast and the milkweed down for
the new nest, and match these blue-

berries at the upper corner bush, and
some wool tags from the stony pasture
fence, and — " and Bob White has gone
without kissing her.

Don't always be talking of your hus-
band's devotion. It makes less fortu-
nate women hate you and the rest
disbelieve you.

If you dislike her friends and she
does not like yours, move into a
boarding-house and then neither will
have any.

Compound Proportion

begins the Quarrel

That neither one began;
That was altogether his

fault

If she had been the
man.

If all admiration and interest shown
by other men toward your wife is dis-
tasteful to you, why not insist upon
her wearing a tin mask ?

Adjust your mood to that of your
mate, but don't ever expect him to
reciprocate.

Possible shipwrecks make such inter-
esting reminiscences if you only survive
them. Do not rob your matrimonial
voyage of all incident by jumping over-
board in the first squall.

introduces Relatives

You never knew before ;
And some bear a close

resemblance
To the ancient scrip-
tural poor.

If a man's people are distasteful to
you, better not make them relatives,
unless you contemplate the field of
foreign missions.

If the sunshine of perfect frankness
does not dispel the first misty misun-
derstanding, a London fog may gather.

The guests at your table should be
chosen with a view of compensating
your husband for much pleasant inter-
course with men and women, otherwise
sacrificed by his marriage.

stands for the Solemn

Silences
That often between you

lay,
When hand clasped hand

in the twilight,
And you felt what

neither could say.

In the formula for matrimonial hap-
piness, any satisfactory substitute for
self-forgetting, self-effacing, self-sacri-
ficing love has never been obtained.

Devotion of the genuine brand will
make wrinkle remedies and rouge a
drug on the market.

Every new home is a chemical lab-
oratory that may run to explosives or
spiritual radium.

If you want everything as your
mother used to make it, you will, of
course, be willing to imitate her father
in the size of your vest, checks, etc.

PAKTIES WITH. oniMin OR DOto ROD noi

APPLY

Simple Fractions

A problem which intending students of this work
must not ignore

ruth is the roof-tree's

shade,
Truth is the brook that

flows,

Truth is the light heaven-
made,
Truth is the warmth

that glows;
Truth is the soul, the

spirit, the all
That breathes through
the home, unless
it fall.

If your assets are broad culture, and
his are business integrity and capital,
the ethical success of the partnership
lies with you.

Not two wives in a thousand but
what are absolutely true in thought and
deed, but, being women, masculine at-

tentions are dearer than myrrh and
sweet incense. Give yours the best
domestic article, and fear no foreign
competition.

If you have managed to invest your
husband with the infallibility of the
Pope, don't force your opinion of him
too persistently upon the general pub-
lic; they may have met him before.

is the Union

That typifies the whole
Universe of matter

And Unison of soul.

Do exactly the same qualities give
you exactly the same pleasure after you
have married them? Well, you were
old enough to have known it.

Wear whatever your husband gives
you, even if it is a candlestick for your
back hair.

You shouldn't have married him
unless you were willing to live in a
dugout in Nebraska on salt mackerel
and corn bread for the sake of living
with him; and if such is the case, a
shortage in the millinery allowance
won't cause any domestic gloom.

stands for all the Virtues
That each in the other

admired;
And another score or a

hundred more
Each found must be
acquired.

You may be a regular Napoleon of
finance and a modern Alexander in
manipulating men, but try introducing
a raw Swede girl to a coal range, the
ice-box, the basement laundry, the attic
bedroom and the electric bells and
speaking-tubes — and then go into exile
at Elba or Elmira.

Be sure that your husband carries
each day the impression that he left at
home that morning the most charming,
cheery, freshly gowned woman in the
city.

Unless you are especially favored with
money, strength and the devotion of
servants, some of the domestic tradi-
tions will have to be sacrificed, and it
behooves you to decide early which
shall have precedence — your husband's
convenience, your own culture, or im-
maculate housekeeping. There are six
possible variations of the order, but
only one produces harmony.

UNIVERSITY)

A Problem in Decimals
Ex.: .80*$+. 20-*=?

oman and Wine and

Woe,
A Wife and Work and

Weal—

They each give pleasure
In different measure,
As the false or true
appeal.

If you selected your wife because of
her style, don't growl when the styles
change.

Having deprived your wife of all
other legitimate male escort by mar-
rying her, you can hardly in honor do
less in that line than when the field
was open to others.

If you have a quick temper, don't
begin your first housekeeping in a
flat — take a house with a coal and
wood cellar and furnace. These fur-
nish a means of working ofFany amount
of indigestion, grouch and profanity.

is the Ten you lost just

when
The coal in the bin

was low;
Or it may be the bill that

went to fill
Her soubrettity after

the show ;
Or possibly, now, it played

that cow
Called the favorite on

the track;

Or it may be was caught
where Horatio
fought,

At the bridge, against
the whole pack.

Elevate your husband's sports by
participating in them.

If you have married a man with
sporting tendencies, don't expect him
to cheerfully substitute a symphony
concert for some Lou Dillon event.

Don't take all elasticity out of your
husband's purse by keeping your hand

in it.

No gentleman compels his wife to
live in a blue haze of tobacco smoke
or a conversational atmosphere laden
with the rococco doings of his fellows.

is the Youth that lingers
Long where love doth

dwell ;

Though the hair be white
And eyes lose sight,
Youth sings in the

heart, "All's well."

The most interesting book you can
ever put in your wife's hands is a bank-
book in her own name.

When you can use railroad graders
in your laboratory, cowboys for bank
clerks, chimney-sweeps for bookkeepers,
blacksmiths for stenographers, — then

attack the domestic servant problem
that your wife possibly has not handled
with entire success.

The firm conviction held three hun-
dred and sixty-four days in the year
that you've said an extravagant number
of fond, foolish things to your wife is
more comfortable than the entertain-
ment of genuine remorse for five min-
utes.

Your judgment may be good about
selecting gowns, but if it is really good,
you won't use it.

may stand for Zero ;
In spite of the axiom

taught
That in marriage two are

one,
The result is often

naught.
Compound your interests

daily,
Subtract all fear and

doubt,
Multiply your joys, add

more love;

The sum's worth figur-
ing out.

LIFORNIA LIBRARY